Activism for all
by Betty Christiansen

As I’m racing downtown to drop another project in the mailbox, I see them — five or six women gathered on the corner of Fourth and Main. They are wearing black and holding signs that say “War Is Not the Answer” and “Peace to All the World’s People.” And as I eye them from the stoplight, I recognize a few faces. There’s Christine, with her intense, dark eyes, in her wheelchair. And there’s gentle Madeline, who just turned 80. They are part of the local chapter of Women in Black and are holding a silent vigil against violence. I admire them.

I admire any woman who takes time out of her busy life to take a stand, quiet or otherwise, for something she believes in. And in my community of La Crosse, Wisconsin, I have many rich examples to look up to.

There’s June Kjome, a Lutheran activist who spent 19 years in South Africa as a nurse, midwife, and missionary during apartheid. Now, at age 87, she is an activist with such boldness that she is regularly celebrated and occasionally arrested for her protests. There’s Paula Murphy, who travels to India to work with a community called Auroville, a model for peace and human unity. She’s particularly passionate about the rights of women and a microloan program that helps women develop cottage industries and rise out of poverty. I know women who travel across the world on volunteer vacations, who climb on buses bound for war protests in Washington, and who diligently call their representatives. I admire them. But can I call myself one of them?

Maybe I am like you: I learn of injustice in the world and it hurts my heart. I hear of war and it makes me ask hard questions. I see the inequality in our country —i n my own community — and it makes me furious. I would take an hour to stand with the Women in Black, but I also have a job, a husband, and a small child, and there are meals to make and bills to pay and so much laundry to do. My greatest act of activism these days has been putting an “End the War” sign in my yard, which I might not have thought to do had not a friend — an ardent pacifist and the mother of a Marine — given me one.

When one considers what it means to be an activist, it’s easy to think in extremes. It’s true that the women I call activists are stunning examples of that term. But I am coming to realize that there are levels of activism, levels that are much more attainable and perhaps much less visible, but no less heartfelt and very important. We do ourselves — and the world — a disservice when we set the bar too high.

Having grown up Lutheran, I have fond memories of playing under the long wooden tables in our church’s activity hall as my mother set up her sewing machine above me. She gathered there with other women of the church to spend an afternoon sewing quilts for Lutheran World Relief. My mother, a quiet woman with her own fiery heart (she had my sisters and me write letters to save the whales), had definite opinions about how the quilts should be assembled. She insisted on putting batting between the quilt layers, even though they were bound for very warm climates, because it would get cold at night. She used her brightest remnants for the quilts, because people who had so little needed something cheerful as well as warm. She and the other women never stood on street corners with placards, nor had they ever ridden a bus to a protest. But in their own quiet way, they gathered to take a stand for something they believed in.

With their own hands and their precious time, they sewed solutions, not for complex problems like poverty, but for real people — cold people, sad people — whom they could help. And they dove into this task with the passion, determination, and the resourcefulness of women —workers, wives, and mothers — who juggled everything and still found time to save the world.

Thirty years later and no doubt inspired on some level by this memory, I sought out another community of quiet activists with the same passion to change the world but with a different medium: knitting. My goal was to write a book that celebrated these “charity knitters,” who, like the quilters from my childhood, use a favorite hobby to warm and soothe people in their communities and around the world. I interviewed dozens of women — and they were mostly women — who had founded and were running charity knitting programs.

Often from their dining-room tables, they organized the efforts of good-hearted knitters all over the country for a particular cause, whether children orphaned by AIDS in Africa, mothers in Afghanistan, traumatized children in the United States, or grieving people in their own churches. Few considered themselves activists, probably saving that title for the types of women I described earlier. But activists they were, in their own right. Activists, too, are the people who diligently supply these organizations with hats, mittens, shawls, and toys — tangible manifestations of a desire to change the world.

And activists we all can be, regardless of our willingness to go to jail for our convictions, our ability to travel, or the constraints on our time. We are activists when we shop for groceries and choose local produce. We are activists when we seek out fair-trade coffee and low-impact cleaning supplies. We are activists when we teach our children to turn off the lights or we take them places where they can discover the beauty of nature and develop a respect for the environment. We are activists when we make a meal or create something beautiful and warm for a person in need.

As my hero June Kjome once said, “Your life is the sum of little choices. So choose carefully.” Small choices do add up, and together, they make an impact — we make an impact. Choosing to live in accordance with what is in our hearts isn’t always easy. It takes time and effort. But that’s what activists do, on whatever level we can. It’s how we change the world — hour by hour, stitch by stitch, woman by woman.

Betty Christiansen is the author of Knitting for Peace: Make the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time. She lives with her husband, Andrew, and son, Eliot, in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

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